Recent Trends in Late Antique Iranian Studies, Part II: Problematics in Chronological Demarcations of Late Antique Iran
Panel 087, sponsored byAssociation for the Study of Persianate Societies, 2009 Annual Meeting
On Sunday, November 22 at 4:30 pm
Panel Description
Pioneering studies of Sasanian legal administration(s) during the past two decades has already led to exhilarating results. This research promises to pave the way for future studies on the much-neglected issue of the potential influence, practical and theoretical, of Sasanian juridical institutions and ideas on the development of the shari?a. Bringing together the results of this research in the context of 1) Sasanian family law and the position of women therein, and juxtaposing this in relation to 2) the mechanism at the disposal of the “minority” religio-juridical establishments, the first panel of Recent Trends in Late Antique Iranian Studies, Panel I: “Legal Structures of Iran in Late Antiquity,” will shed new light on important dimensions of Iranian legal system in the late antique period.
A major bone of contention in the studies of Iran in the early medieval period revolves around issues of continuity or lack thereof in its history. Presenting new perspectives on chronological problems surrounding watershed events in the history of Iran, Panel II: “Problematics in Chronological Demarcations of Late Antique Iran,” will reflect upon axiomatic chronologies adopted thus far in the field, and the political and cultural ideological implications of maintaining or revising these chronological schemas. Recent studies on the shu?ubiyya controversy will provide a potentially crucial test case for discussing issues of continuity and rupture in this domain.
Panel III: “Aesthetic, Sacred and Martial Expressions of Iran in the Late Antique period,” discusses the latest research on important aspects of the history of Iran in the late antique period. The first paper in this panel explores the use of pearls as the favorite gems of Sasanian kings and elites, while the second paper investigates the archaeological evidence for the creation of major Zoroastrian shrines and the reinterpretation of the ancient Avestan past during the late Sasanian period. The third paper considers possible Sasanian roots for the moral and martial codes of later Islamic brotherhoods, while the fourth paper re-examines the enigmatic, but crucial military corps known as the asawira in the early Islamic sources.
Finally, the fourth panel, Panel IV: “Urban and Agricultural Processes and Transformations,” offers state-of-the-arts research -- conducted from a long-duree perspective -- on the continuities and ruptures in the urban, agricultural and administrative landscape of Iran during antiquity (500-850s) and the new historiographical methodologies used for obtaining these results.
The following paper attempts to periodize the end of late antique period in the Near East (628 to 651 CE). The fall of the Sasanians has been usually discussed in light of the devastating wars with the Byzantines, followed by the rapid Arab Muslim conquest of the Near East. Recently, divisions within Iranian families of the Parthian and Persian houses have been suggested as a cause of the decline and fall of the Sasanians. This essay provides a periodization which could explain the stages and ways in which there was a collapse of the Sasanians before the Muslim conquest. It is proposed that there were three major period in the late Sasanian history: I) Fratricide; II) Civil War and the Waning of Political Legitimacy; and III) Wandering Kingship. The first period begins with the death of Khusro II from 628 to the rule of Kawad II and his son who killed all his brothers and legitimate heirs to the throne by 630 CE. The second period begins with the rule of Queen Boran to the rule of Yazdgerd III (629-631 CE) This period is characterized by simultaneous rule of kings, queens and other provincial contenders; and finally the third period is the time of Yazdgerd III (632-651 CE) when the king moved from city to city trying to gain assistance from the local lords and provincial governors.
To date, the chronology of early Arab conquest of Iraq in the first half of the 7th century has been wrought with confusion. As a result, we continue to remain in the dark about a host of other, crucial questions, relating to the rise of Arabo-Islamic polity during this early stage: viz., what was the sequence of these wars vis-à-vis the conquest of Syria, and hence the respective importance of either to the emerging polity (was the conquest of Jerusalem, or the take-over of important trade entrepots in Mesopotamia, the primary aim of the conquerors?); Was there a central “directorate” that managed and prioritized the course of the conquest of Iraq and Syria – and again to what purpose ...? The answers that we continue to seek to these questions will have important implications for our understanding of early Islamic history. Establishing a sound chronology, therefore, remains an important desideratum for research.
Hitherto, all other comparative chronological data, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, etc., have been exhausted with meager results in this research. One important set of data, however, i.e., those pertaining to the numismatic and literary evidence of the Sasanian Empire, has been completely neglected in this century-old endeavor. Undertaking a comparative examination of the futuh – as contained in the accounts of Sayf b. Umar in Tabari – against the accounts of the Khwaday-Namag tradition[s] as contained in the Persian and Arabic sources, as well as Sasanian numismatic evidence, this study will propose a revised chronology for the early Arab conquest of Iraq, and discuss the potentially crucial consequences of these findings for our understanding of the rise of the Arabo-Islamic polity.
Reviewing an array of literary evidence as contained in universal and local histories, geographers works as well as Islamic, instructional and official chancellery treatises, in classical Arabic, Persian and foreign sources, and the Shahnama of Ferdowsi, in order to understand the nature of the socio-political, cultural, and religious institutions and values of Iranians throughout several thousand years, it has become clear to me that the division of Iranian history into the "Pre– and Post–Islamic" periods is not a sound terminology for studying it.
My research into the nature of Iranian contributions to the world community in its socio-political, religious and artistic spheres indicates that, despite some political set backs, there has always been continuity in every one of the above. Considering current studies on conquest and conversion in Iran, furthermore, it has become clear to me that the above division of Iranian history is not commensurate with the ways in which classical historical sources in Arabic or Persian have understood these periods.
Taking a long duree perspective, in this paper I will suggest that the most logical procedure for viewing Iranian history is to consider it as a spectrum that divides itself into the following periods: 1) The "Ancient Period," i.e. Iranian history in the prehistoric period; 2) the "Sovereignty Era" – i.e. the period of the Medes, the Achaemenids, the Parthians, and the Sasanians; 3) the "Post-Sasanian Period" – i.e. a period that witnessed the establishment of a multi-religious society; and finally 4) the "Islamic Period," a period which itself may be partitioned into the "Islamic Period without Iranian Sovereignty" – i. e. the 11th to the 15th centuries – and "Islamic Period with Iranian Sovereignty" – i.e. the 16th century to the present.
The works of ninth century historians ?abar? and D?navar? are often gleaned for kernels of historical fact. However, the sections dealing with Iranian history may shed light on the earliest forms of the shu‘?b?yah movement, as recent scholarship has determined, was a literary movement. The paper first deals with how the shu‘?b?yah movement is understood and interpreted by modern scholarship to provide a framework for inquiry into ?abar?’s T?r?kh and Tafs?r (and to a lesser extent D?navar?’s al-Akhb?r) as early examples of texts involved with the shu‘?b?yah movement. The paper addresses the importance of genealogies for the Arabs and the way in which ?abar? and D?navar? utilize ancient Iranian history and intertwine it with the Judeo-Islamic history to provide Iranians with a genealogy equal to that of the Arabs who themselves had been given a new pan-Arabo-Islamic genealogy by the biographer Ibn Is??q. The conclusion of this inquiry illustrates that the earliest forms of the shu‘?b?yah movement manifested itself in a competitive style where one author emulates the style of an earlier or contemporary rival’s work.
